The Fight That Went Down in History… (For All the Wrong Reasons)

Dear Gobsmacked Business Owner,

You might want to brace yourself for what you’re about to witness…

Take your seats because here at a packed-and-sold-out Madison Square Garden in NYC, the fighters have made their way down to the ring.

The noise is incredible, and so loud you can barely hear yourself think.

As people start to clear the ring, the bell is struck repeatedly to capture the attention of the audience…

The crescendo of noise suddenly reduces into a constant murmur.

“In the red corner, standing at 6ft 7”, weighing 250lbs and looking like he wants to do some serious damage… is the reigning world champion ‘Widow Maker Wilson’ …

His record currently stands at 28 fights, 28 wins… with 26 coming by way of knockout… and 2 by way of manslaughter!”

Gasps can be heard around the venue.

“In the blue corner, standing at 3ft 5”, weighing 42lbs and looking like he needs a change of shorts… is our challenger ‘Third Grader Jeff’…

His record currently stands at 0 fights, 0 wins” …  the announcer covers the mic, his voice fades so you barely hear him asking the promoter if this is legal… he receives a response, removes his hand from the mic, then begins to make his much-loved declaration of war…

“LET’S… GET… READY… TO… RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUMBLE! …

IIIIIT’S SHOWTIME”

The referee calls both fighters to the centre of the ring… The Widow Maker slams his gloves together so forcefully, the impact is felt at the back of the arena.

This catches Jeff by surprise, sending a jolt of fear racing through his fragile little body… he looks up to see the imposing figure of his opponent towering over him like a 3-storey building…

As panic begins to take hold, his jaw drops wide open, and in the chaos his gumshield falls to the canvas…

Fumbling on the ground he struggles to collect his mouthpiece with the clumsy gloves on his hands… and every time he tries to pick it up, he knocks it further away… which has the audience laughing hysterically… geez, tough crowd!

The Widow Maker starts to psyche himself up and taunts Jeff… “YOU’RE A DEAD MAN!”

Eventually, after the referee helps Jeff collect his equipment from the floor and places it in his mouth… “for protection”… he tells both boxers to fight fair and starts the contest.

“Hammer him, Jeff!” comes an optimistic shout from the crowd…

Both fighters square off in the centre, Widow Maker draws his arm back then with all his might, launches his fist towards Jeff’s tiny little head…

***THIS HAS BEEN CENSORED IN YOUR STATE AND WE WILL NOW ATTEMPT TO ERASE THIS EVENT FROM HISTORY***

“Back to your main host… Andrew from ReyDesign!”

SPOILER ALERT… for those of you who don’t want to know the outcome of the fight… jump past the next sentence…

But for those that do, let’s just say… the Widow Maker won!

The buzz after the fight was around whether or not it was a mismatch… something that won’t help the poor kid now, but at least we can take steps to try and prevent a similar disaster from happening in future.

However, for all the non-boxing enthusiasts out there, let me put this into a marketing context to help you understand this better.

I’ll compare the event to a regular sales funnel to help you visualise what actually went wrong.

Okay, so a funnel is the action of moving a prospect through your sales process until they’re ready to buy your product.

When they first discover you, they’re often clueless about their problem, the various solutions on offer, and your product… so as they make their way through the funnel, you need to educate them until they have enough information that they’re itching to buy from you.

For comparison with the Widow Maker demolition, we can think of the funnel as preparation and training…

Now clearly little Jeff had zero preparation… which you can argue would involve growing older, shooting up in size, and becoming stronger… and while doing so, that would be classed as ‘top of the funnel’.

Once grown, we’d move him to ‘middle of the funnel’ where he’d train to be a boxer and learn his craft (and at least give the poor kid a fighting chance) … at the time of the fight, I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong, but analysing it in the aftermath makes it seem more obvious… poor, poor Jeff!

Right, so now Jeff has grown BIG, he can also fight his way out of a paper bag, it’s time to move him to ‘bottom of the funnel’ as he’s ready, and put him in the ring with an opponent of similar size, strength, and experience… in fact we throw him into amateur boxing.

The results start coming in… he clocks up the wins… and eventually we ‘scale’ the now optimised funnel, and what do you know… he’s turned pro, KO’d the competition and become champion, scooping up all the medals, belts, and gold in the process.

Sadly for Jeff, he had the equivalent of a ‘mediocre marketer’ for a trainer… (luckily in the real world of boxing, trainers this bad are rare) …

In marketing though they’re more common than a cold… and it’s estimated they make up 99% of all marketers.

So, when it comes to funnels and the promotion of your products, chances are you’re going up against the Widow Maker with less preparation than the little man and still expecting to win! … boy I wish I could bottle your confidence as I’d make a fortune selling it!

The point is, there are many variations of sales funnels, and many methods of promotion, that knowing which is the right combo for your business, and also having the skills to execute the plan (execute is probably a poor choice of words so soon after the fight) … is going to be an uphill struggle for most.

So, unless you hire a heavyweight champion to fight your corner, then your business is gonna take a battering!

Don’t be Jeff for crying out loud… when it comes to your sales funnels, you should definitely hire the heavy-hitters!